Re: Bug #1452 Updated: $i = $i++ fails

Jim Winstead wrote: > You're making the strong assertions that the behavior you describe > is "expected" and "intuitive". The construct we're talking about > doesn't lead to bugs because of how PHP evaluates it, it IS a bug. Well, it's only a bug because of PHP's current behaviour. Don't get me wrong. It's clearly a bogus construct, and I'd be ashamed if it ever cropped up in code I'd written. But there's a difference between bad/inefficient/redundant code and code with syntax or logic errors. That's what makes Perl haiku and obfuscated C contests possible. The code posted with the original bug report had a logic error in it, causing an infinite loop. If PHP behaved differently, that same code would be merely inefficient and slightly embarrassing. I suppose I am making fairly strong assertions about what is "intuitive" or "expected." But I also think they're true. The guy that posted the bug in the first place wasn't totally out to lunch, despite his exposure to questionable code. > I see no reason to pin down a defined behavior since if anything > is obvious, it is that the construct is completely bogus, and to > define its behavior limits future opportunities for possible code > optimization. Now "limits future opportunities for possible code optimization" would be one of the good reasons I was looking for. > Of course, Zeev is the one you have to convince, not me. :) Believe it or not, I'm not actually trying to convince anyone. To some extent, I'm playing devils advocate here. It *is* a bogus construct, and maybe newbies who make that error should get burned by it right away, so they don't carry a bad habit into the C world. But Zeev framed the question as an implementation decision which is left open by the C spec. Though he didn't say so specifically, I gather from his comments that a decision had been made during the implementation of PHP. I figure there's a fairly good argument for the opposite decision, and I'm curious as to the rational behind the decision that was made. I realize this is much ado about nothing and I'm on slightly thin ice here as I've never written a compiler or even contributed to the PHP source, but hey, this isn't your usual flame bait... --------------------------------------------------------- Colin Putney colin@whistler.net Bit Flinger (604) 932-0606 x21 Whistler Networks http://www.whistler.net/ -- PHP Development Mailing List http://www.php.net/ To unsubscribe send an empty message to php-dev-unsubscribe@lists.php.net For help: php-dev-help@lists.php.net